Dadvice Weekly #39 / The Reliability Tax
Dadvice Weekly - #39
Being reliable will get you promoted.
It’s one of the fastest ways to stand out early in your career. You respond quickly, you follow through, and you do what you say you’re going to do. When something needs to get done, people do not think of which role should do it, instead they think of you individually. For a while, that’s exactly what you want. You say yes, take on more, and build a reputation as someone who can be counted on.
At some point though, something will shift.
I remember hitting my first moment of this where I thought, I have too much on my plate. Some of what I was carrying wasn’t even in my job description, but I also knew that if I didn’t do it, it probably wouldn’t get done. That’s a tough spot to be in, but it’s also a spot you earn. The work finds you because you’ve proven you can handle it.
What no one really tells you is that this is a rite of passage for strong contributors. There isn’t a playbook for what to do next in your specific scenario. You have to figure it out in real time and determine how to navigate your situation.
Early on, its asking the question can I do this? Later, it becomes should I be the one doing this? Those are very different questions, and answering the second one requires a different kind of discipline and operating system.
If you keep saying yes to everything, eventually you become responsible for far more than your role. You’re doing your job and parts of other people’s jobs, not because it makes sense, but because you’ve proven you’re reliable. What got you here starts to work against you.
This is where the definition of growth shifts. It’s no longer about doing more. It’s about doing less, doing it better, and teaching others how to do what you said “no” to. It’s also a mindset shift to teaching others to do it, even if you’re better at it than them when they first start.
The goal here isn’t to stop being reliable. It’s to become someone who knows what’s worth owning, what’s worth teaching others, and having the discipline to say “no” to a task or responsibility if it doesn’t fall in your lane or you don’t have capacity to take on.
This is something I have experienced and continue to experience. The first time this happened to me I thought I could power through. I quickly learned I need to change something about the way I work and guard my work/life balance. At some point, if you’re doing a good job, you will be asked to do more than you have time for.
Here are tangible resources that have helped me transition my mindset on defining my role, logical responses when other’s ask me to help when I don’t have capacity, and ultimately leads to attainable work load and job satisfaction. -SW
Essentialism by Greg McKeown
This book might be the singular best resource if you resonate with what I previously said. The TLDR on it is not everything is equally important, and most things you are asked to do are not important at all. What you say “yes” to needs to be calculated and every “yes” you give is inherently 10’s or 100’s of “no’s”. This is the ultimate guide for providing framework to build cognitive muscles for determining what is worth my yes and by default everything else is a no. -SW
Define Your Non-Negotiables of Work/Life Balance
What will you not negotiate when it comes to work/life balance? Actually write these down and communicate these to your manager. Here’s some examples I have going:
I will be online somewhere between 7:30-8 and offline somewhere between 5-5:30. I like this because it sets a block of time that I am at work. It also sets a block of time for when I am not at work. If my work is bigger than my 45-50 hour container then I know there is too much work, I do not negotiate with myself that “maybe tonight I can hop online once the baby is asleep to finish that task.”
I do not respond to Teams nor Outlook on my phone. From time to time I will delete these two mobile apps, but I have learned I like being able to check it after hours to see my schedule for the next day. I have notifications off on both of these. But the non-negotiable is I do not respond on my phone to these messages. I need to be on my laptop to do that.
I do not go to meetings between 8-9 and 4-5 unless I initiate them. On my calendar I have a recurring meeting to block these pockets of time. I have learned that I need an hour in the morning to settle in and knock out my work. I also have an hour to end the day to knock out my task list for time sensitive items. This has dramatically helped me transition myself to work mindset, then out of work mindset to husband/dad. I have learned through trial in error that unless I have this time blocked I will take meetings during those times and not finish the day well. -SW
Turn Off Your Outlook Notifications
A year ago my Outlook stopped working on my phone for a few days while IT sorted out some issues. No notifications or chimes. Initially it was stressful, and I feared I might miss something important. I kept waiting for something to catch fire, but nothing ever did. What I noticed instead was how much easier it was to get work done. I already check my email enough during the day that the notifications weren’t telling me anything I wouldn’t have found on my own. They were just interrupting me. Getting into a real headspace for work takes me 15-20 minutes sometimes, and I’d been handing that window over to whoever happened to type my name into a To field. I turned them off when IT fixed things and haven’t looked back. 10/10 recommend, and I bet you could get by without them too. –KC
Dadvice Weekly is Kyle and Skyler—two friends in their thirties, living in Colorado, settling into fatherhood and trying to stay sane. Every Tuesday we share what’s working in our homes: gear we use, routines we’ve tested, ideas we’re trying. It could be a recipe, a product that solved a problem, or just what we’re thinking about as dads.
If you have a tip, tried something we mentioned, or just want to say hi, reply to this email or message us on Substack. We read everything, and we’re always looking for what works. Glad you’re here.